


Don't you wanna see a man up close

by Teatrolley



Category: London Spy
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Pre-disappearance, a study of their love, alex is hard to figure out, but danny is a patient man, post episode 4, soulmate conversation mention, they're very much in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 22:54:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5351423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teatrolley/pseuds/Teatrolley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Once in a while Alex doesn’t look at him like he’s an enigma that needs solving. From time to time they share a bed and a blanket, but not hot air and desire, and during those times the analysing look will fall gradually off Alex’s features and make way for what Danny could only deduce to be tenderness."</p><p>_________________</p><p>Alex decodes encrypted messages using complicated algorithms. Danny decodes Alex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't you wanna see a man up close

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Troye Sivan's Bite
> 
> So I'm very very much in love with this show, and I needed to write something with these beautiful characters. This is written post episode 4, so before the last episode, so my take on these characters might change by next Monday. We'll see. I'm very excited for it.

Marcus is right: Danny didn’t know of Alex’s intelligence, at least not in the way that he knows of it now. In fact, he will never know it the way Marcus knows it, because he will never possess the intellectual prowess to fully understand any of this code that they’re looking at now.

This doesn’t mean that Danny didn’t know him at all.

 

__

 

Alex takes his coffee with three sugars at home – when they’re out in public he takes it with only one. Marcus might have mocked this kind of knowledge, but in Alex’s case this is almost a microcosm for the bigger picture of him that Danny is beginning to put together. 

Alex’s flat is all monochromatic; it’s black and white, it’s stark lines and strict order. Danny’s flat is exactly the opposite. Thus Danny at first expected that they’d spend most of their time in Alex’s apartment. He’s wrong.

These two things might not seem to have a lot in common, but they do, because to Danny they reveal something deeper. When Alex is over, and their central heating is off, he will always borrow the same multi-colored jumper from Danny’s closet. He is, despite appearances, and contrary to what he likes to make the world think, fond of the messy, fond of the sweet. 

Danny thinks that might be why Alex is fond of him. 

 

The first time Danny makes Alex laugh, it’s not because he says something funny. It’s because he says something sweet and silly, as he tries to dig his fingertips into the muscled but-still-occasionally-soft skin above Alex’s hip while kissing his neck sweetly. They’re not in bed, and it’s not supposed to lead to something, which in itself is a novelty to Danny. They’re just sharing soft space and gentle air. 

Danny’s proud smile splits his face in half; he can feel it. Seeing it, Alex chuckles again. Danny’s breath is taken away, but he kisses Alex again to hide it. Alex’s lips taste of affection and comfort. 

__

Sometimes Danny gets the feeling that Alex has already seen all of him, and has calculated all of his possible actions. Occasionally he catches Alex watching him, and his gaze is focused, leaving Danny with the impression that he’s being studied. 

Not long into their relationship he learns to respond to this studying with a small smile. One day when, before he can stop himself, he asks, “What are you thinking?” he learns that Alex doesn’t mind sharing. Not here, anyway. 

“You’re happy,” Alex says, in that slightly off way of his. He’s sitting on his own white, pristine sofa, his back straight as if there’s a stick down his body, hidden under his pale skin. “Excited. You have this slight spring in your step. It’s like the energy can’t be contained within you.”

He’s right. Of course he is. 

“Do you want to know why?” is what Danny asks in reply. He doesn’t join Alex on the couch yet.

“Please.” 

“I was thinking about you,” Danny says. He doesn’t have the kind of deductive skills that Alex does, but he has experienced a lot of human interaction, so he doesn’t miss the surprise encoded in Alex’s slightly, momentarily widening eyes. 

“You can ask,” he says, when Alex looks on the verge on something.

“What are you thinking about me?” 

This time Danny does join him. He moves in nearly close enough for their lips to be touching, but he lets Alex make the move. Now that he knows that Alex eventually will, he finds it fascinating to leave the decision up to him. 

Alex kisses him. 

“I was thinking that I’m in love with you,” Danny whispers afterwards. Alex’s eyes screw up and paint wrinkles on his skin when he smiles. 

__

 

Once in a while Alex doesn’t look at him like he’s an enigma that needs solving. From time to time they share a bed and a blanket, but not hot air and desire, and during those times the analysing look will fall gradually off Alex’s features and make way for what Danny could only deduce to be tenderness. 

Usually Alex’s face has just that slight edge of taut, like he’s constantly focusing hard on something, but when he looks at Danny like this, his face is taken over by softness. He’s delicate like this, more than ever, and Danny could almost be fooled into thinking that Alex was a younger soul than he is. 

__

By the fifteenth time Danny has Alex naked in his bed he has a mental image of all of the ways he can make Alex moan and sigh, depending on where and how harshly he touches and presses and licks and bites. Alex is truly a sight like this; Hair unruly, legs spread and skin flushed. All of his usual orderly and arranged, put-together air falls away, and left is only bare emotion and naked desire.

Danny means it when he says that it’s impossible to fake inexperience, which is one of the reasons he is absolutely unable to be persuaded that the attic was in any way belonging to Alex. One night Danny has his fingers wrapped around Alex’s wrists, and is holding them above Alex’s head on the mattress when he accidently squeezes just a little too hard. Alex gasps loudly in surprise, but then he moans. Nothing about the way he looks then, or the expression he wears when his eye catch Danny’s, suggests that he had any prior knowledge of this kink. 

Danny studies him, and must confess his own surprise. He carefully, slowly, squeezes Alex’s wrists again, until the skin beneath his fingertips turn white, and Alex’s brows furrow in pain just as his mouth falls open and his head is thrown back in pleasure. 

“I’ll bruise you,” is Danny’s only comment, because he can already see the tell-tale reddening of Alex’s fragile, tight skin. 

“Yes,” Alex agrees, breathless. 

 

The next morning Danny places his fingertips over those very same bruises as they wait for the kettle to boil for coffee, but this time his touch is soft. Alex watches his own wrist together with Danny, before he interrupts them by kissing Danny softly.

__

 

There’s a very particular tightening to the skin around Alex’s mouth when he’s angry, and a meticulously contained harshness to his tone. 

Danny doesn’t see it often, but when he does it feels like someone has taken a hold of his heart and is squeezing. 

He sees it that time on the beach, when he asks about soulmates. Alex’s tone is intense when he gives his answer, but the harshness doesn’t appear before Danny asks him if he couldn’t have lied. 

They don’t talk anymore about it, but that night Danny lies next to a cold, tightly wound body, as Alex turns his back to him. It’s their first real fight.

 

He thinks a lot about it that night, sleepless with insomnia. He doesn’t talk to Scotty about it, because somehow the idea of it feels like defeat. It takes him a long time to realise what Alex meant. In all of that time Alex seems constantly on edge, and when he watches Danny it isn’t to study him so much as like he’s waiting for something serious to happen.

He’s still hurt when he suggests that Alex sees other people, and he’s still oblivious. At the sight of Alex’s first tear, the realisation of what he meant hits him hard in his stomach, with all the weight of a room full of bricks. 

“I don’t want to,” Alex says; the sound of his voice broken like this is enough to kill Danny. “I don’t need to.”

“I know,” Danny says. “I’m sorry.” He has never been as relieved as when Alex allows him to throw his arms around him and hug him tightly, touching him in a way he hasn’t for weeks. “I know.” 

Alex hugs him back with a desperation Danny has only ever felt with him during sex. Only this is not desire; it’s fear and the relief from it. 

“I’m so sorry,” Danny whispers to Alex’s cheek. “I understand now.” Alex doesn’t pull away when he asks,

“Do you?” 

“Yes.” Danny pulls away enough to be able to catch Alex’s eyes. His eyes are red-rimmed, and his nose is snotty. Danny smiles and runs his thumb over Alex’s cheekbones. He’s never loved him more. He’s never loved anyone more. 

“I meant what I said back at the start: If it gets rough, we talk to each other, and we sort it out.”

Alex kisses him, despite them being in public, and despite him not being one for PDA.

 

Later, in a time where Danny wishes for anything, even the cold of those two weeks back, Scotty will tell Danny that he wanted Alex to be perfect so much that he neglected to realise that he was a person as complex and flawed as Danny himself. This might have been true for the first few months of their relationship, but when Alex cries, Danny realises something: Alex is not some perfect person who magically fits into every single piece of Danny’s life. He isn’t a soulmate. He’s something so much better: He’s a person. And he’s real. 

__

In the beginning, Alex always says it with a serious air, delivering the three words, eight letters, as if they are a carefully kept secret that is only being decrypted for Danny’s single, lonely ears to hear. Ironic, really. He will only say it during very romantic or very heavy moments. 

As time goes on however, he will say it more casually, sometimes when Danny is making him giggle into the back of his own hand. Danny will always be careful to say it back. 

Even later they will start dropping it randomly into conversation, and Danny will sometimes not say “I love you, too,” but “I know.” Alex has a very particular smile situated somewhere between affection and proudness that he will give whenever this happens. 

It doesn’t really matter how they say it though. What matters is that it’s real. True. And, accurately, Danny might not know a lot, and he certainly isn’t particularly academically skilled, but this he knows for a fact: He loves Alex more than he has ever loved anyone. And Alex loves him back.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, you. Yeah, you! If you liked this, why don't you shoot me a comment?


End file.
